Schools taxes, property taxes, income tax

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
Status
Not open for further replies.
I left the W-2 world 27 years ago ,never going back. No faith in 401ks either. They are tied to the value of the dollar, stock market performance, and the honesty of the funds administrators. All of which may be questionable. Edit: let me add the ability of the owner to select the assets within to appreciate in value,a crap shoot at best.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: DBNH22
No faith in 401ks either. They are tied to the value of the dollar, stock market performance, and the honesty of the funds administrators. All of which may be questionable.
Gold is awful cold under the mattress. What's your retirement plan?
 
Gold is awful cold under the mattress. What's your retirement plan?
Sitting on a pile of mortgages in various stages of fulfillment. As for as paper funds ,i just dont have much faith in paper with numbers on it, Gold yes, gold will be worth something when the paper is not. Plus there is no government insurance for assets held in 401(k) accounts.
 
Last edited:
I dont know state by state, but at least around here, anyone with a 4 year degree in a STEM field is starting out no lower than 60-70k.. People with advanced degrees start higher. Easy to get into the 6 figures as an engineer with a few years of job experience...

I wish but it darn sure isn't like that around here (that or I'm getting screwed). I've got a 4 year ME degree from Penn State, 6 years experience, a ton of hands on skills, and I have yet to clear your lowest starting number. As far as income tax, I don't bother looking. We haven't owned the place long enough to know what the school and property taxes are going to be.
 
I wish but it darn sure isn't like that around here (that or I'm getting screwed). I've got a 4 year ME degree from Penn State, 6 years experience, a ton of hands on skills, and I have yet to clear your lowest starting number. As far as income tax, I don't bother looking. We haven't owned the place long enough to know what the school and property taxes are going to be.
Some of the countryside around Carlisle is beautiful, and you have one heck of a Chrysler show every summer, but your local salary profile is absolutely abysmal. If you'd be willing to relocate or commute to Philly or the Lehigh Valley, you'd probably be able to double your salary in short order.

Another issue is that management types don't always value "hands on" skills as much as they probably should. I'm a "hands on" guy myself, and it took me 10 years in the working world to realize those skills were valuable to me, but were not going to help me get to higher salary positions.
 
Last edited:
location, location, location!... Its not just about real estate. When I said "around here" I was thinking Boston and of the first hand knowledge I have as a hiring manager in software engineering. Boston is not the highest but we are probably not far behind silicon valley, NY, etc as as expensive areas goes.


Joful makes some good points as well. If you want to progress beyond entry level, like it or not you have to develop a sense for office politics and try to judge what the organization wants in senior staff. In my company we have a technical track that goes all the way up to technical VP level - with salary and bonuses at each level that's competitive with (if a bit lower) than the managerial track. However having been on the hiring and promoting end I will say if a team member just wants to sit in their office and do purely technical work all day you are never going to make it to the consultant, principle, fellow, etc level in the technical track in my group. When I consider somebody to move up to thsoe levels Im looking for them to play a role at the team if not organizational wide level, being a mentor to junior technical folks, training, setting architectural direction for entire product lines and designing infrastructural the rest of the engineering staff builds on, creating technical standards and guidelines for the group to follow, and so forth.

In industries with high levels of outsourcing that also means you better pay very careful attention to what functions are kept local and which ones are going offshore, and plan appropriately. I can also add that there have been multiple times when I have actually passed on the candidate with the most impressive technical background to pick somebody who we feel will be a better team player and more open to learning new things. Its often hard for us technical types as we tend to not have the personality type for it, but you have to get out there, stick your nose into company politics and judge where things are going, and play the game.

Bottom line, when you get past the first 2-3 levels in a technical organization - being able to do the math or write the code better than anyone else is no longer the sole, or even most important factor in how you will progress.
 
I live in NH. There is no sales or income tax here but they make it up in property taxes.

For a 2400 square foot home with 3 acres of land in southern suburban NH I pay about 6K a year. I'd say about 70-75% is for the schools.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bobbin
location, location, location!... Its not just about real estate. When I said "around here" I was thinking Boston and of the first hand knowledge I have as a hiring manager in software engineering. Boston is not the highest but we are probably not far behind silicon valley, NY, etc as as expensive areas goes.


Joful makes some good points as well. If you want to progress beyond entry level, like it or not you have to develop a sense for office politics and try to judge what the organization wants in senior staff. In my company we have a technical track that goes all the way up to technical VP level - with salary and bonuses at each level that's competitive with (if a bit lower) than the managerial track. However having been on the hiring and promoting end I will say if a team member just wants to sit in their office and do purely technical work all day you are never going to make it to the consultant, principle, fellow, etc level in the technical track in my group. When I consider somebody to move up to thsoe levels Im looking for them to play a role at the team if not organizational wide level, being a mentor to junior technical folks, training, setting architectural direction for entire product lines and designing infrastructural the rest of the engineering staff builds on, creating technical standards and guidelines for the group to follow, and so forth.

In industries with high levels of outsourcing that also means you better pay very careful attention to what functions are kept local and which ones are going offshore, and plan appropriately. I can also add that there have been multiple times when I have actually passed on the candidate with the most impressive technical background to pick somebody who we feel will be a better team player and more open to learning new things. Its often hard for us technical types as we tend to not have the personality type for it, but you have to get out there, stick your nose into company politics and judge where things are going, and play the game.

Bottom line, when you get past the first 2-3 levels in a technical organization - being able to do the math or write the code better than anyone else is no longer the sole, or even most important factor in how you will progress.


Regardless of what industry you're in, if you don't have people and communication skills, sooner or later you are viewed as a liability rather than an asset.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
 
“Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.”–Calvin Coolidge
 
Edit: let me add the ability of the owner to select the assets within to appreciate in value,a crap shoot at best.

Correct. Which is why Index funds and broad diversification are such brilliantly simple solutions.
 
I live in Maine. Allegedly, one of the highest taxed states in our country. I also share ownership in a NH property; I'm always shocked at how high the tax bill on the latter property is. Lol. "Live Free or Die", baby!
 
I live in Maine. Allegedly, one of the highest taxed states in our country. I also share ownership in a NH property; I'm always shocked at how high the tax bill on the latter property is. Lol. "Live Free or Die", baby!


Well NH doesn't have an income or sales tax but they do tend to make it up in the property taxes. I think most of the other New England states do have an overall higher tax burden than NH but it's not as if NH is some low tax shangri la.

If Maine had more decent paying jobs we probably would have bought a home in Maine as opposed to NH and raised our family there. I'm addicted to Maine's beautiful coast. It's my zen place.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
They don't "tend to" make up the difference with property taxes, Dana. They have no alternative. When one of the local assessment stooges tried to add a "view tax" to our bill we pointed out that there was a telephone pole dead center on the "view" they wanted to tax. Lol, give me a break. (grasp at few more straws, why don't you?).

Maine definitely has its problems with respect to taxation and jobs. Much of the state has no swift, reliable internet access (god bless Fairpoint Communications and Time Warner Cable!) and like NH we struggle with high utility costs. It will be interesting to see how successfully the estimable (cough) Mr. LePage sells his proposed tax package to a state that has been historically quite "far thinking",
 
I wish but it darn sure isn't like that around here (that or I'm getting screwed). I've got a 4 year ME degree from Penn State, 6 years experience, a ton of hands on skills, and I have yet to clear your lowest starting number.
Lots of my friends are engineers...did completed their degree and their P. Eng certificate. They started at 40K and barely make more than that 10 years later.
Ordered new car today, when can I expect the check?
No dice.
I'll try again next week!
 
Lots of my friends are engineers...did completed their degree and their P. Eng certificate. They started at 40K and barely make more than that 10 years later.

No dice.
I'll try again next week!
Oh no I was counting on that!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Swedishchef
Lots of my friends are engineers...did completed their degree and their P. Eng certificate. They started at 40K and barely make more than that 10 years later.
Yikes! That sort of ruins any romantic notions I'd have had to move to Canada. I was earning more than that doing internships in college, while I worked on my BSEE. Standard fare for a mid-career electrical engineer around here is $100k - $140k, depending on area of specialization.
 
Gotta remember Joful that a P.Eng cert in Canada is specialization neutral. I know for sure at the sign of the flying red jackass we were paying double e's and chem e's in Canada a hell of a lot more than $40K. Now Industrial Engineers, not so much.

When the first batch of Industrial Engineers were hired and showed up for work at our Beaumont, Texas refinery the chem e's took them into a room and explained to them the difference between industrial engineers and real engineers. ;lol
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Ashful
Yikes! That sort of ruins any romantic notions I'd have had to move to Canada. I was earning more than that doing internships in college, while I worked on my BSEE. Standard fare for a mid-career electrical engineer around here is $100k - $140k, depending on area of specialization.
That salary I quoted is in my home province where the cost of living is peanuts. My spoke to a buddy of mine and he explained that I was sorta mistaken..those salaries were from 14 years ago (guess I am getting old now). Average starting salary for an eng. is 60K. What can you expect: you're not a partner in a firm and you're at the bottom of a food chain with a large firm.
http://talentegg.ca/incubator/2013/09/17/average-starting-salaries-engineering-edition-2013/

I should have gone into chemical engineering instead of chemistry!

Andrew
 
Status
Not open for further replies.